"You must be more alert," said the foreman, imperatively, to Mildred. "These people are among the best and wealthiest in town." "I'll try," was the meek answer. The gentleman had hardly reached the sidewalk, however, before all his chivalry and indignation were aroused. Under the press of Christmas times a drayman had overloaded his cart, and the horse was protesting in his dumb way by refusing to budge an inch; meanwhile the owner proved himself scarcely equal to the animal he drove by furious blows and curses, which were made all the more reckless by his recent indulgence in liquor. The poor beast soon found many champions, and foremost among them was the critic of the weary shop-girl, who had suffered more that day than the horse was capable of suffering in his lifetime. The distinguished citizen, justly irate, I grant, sent his wife home in their carriage, and declared that he would neither eat nor sleep until he had seen the brute--the drayman, not the horse--arrested and looked up, and he kept his word. Much later, the wronged and tortured human creature of whom he had surmised evil, and on whom he had bestowed at best only a little cynical admiration, crept home with steps that faltered, burdened with a heaviness of heart and a weariness of body which could be measured only by the pitiful eye of Him who carries the world's sins and sorrows. The rescued horse munched his oats in stolid tranquillity, the woman raised to heaven her eyes, beneath which were dark, dark lines, and murmured, "O God, how long?" CHAPTER XXIX THE BEATITUDES OF OPIUM